The Birth of an Oracle
by Bard of Prey
Summary: This short story explores how Barbara was told of her paralyzation and how she came to grips with her loss.


The Birth of an Oracle  
By Bethany Davis  
  
She felt fuzzy like someone had filled her head full of cotton balls. Her arms were   
tingly, almost numb. There was an ache settling into her muscles. Slowly, ever so   
slowly, her mind began to fill in the holes. The docks...Batman...the Joker...a visitor...a   
gunshot...a clown's cruel smile...pain....darkness. She used what energy remained to   
force her emerald eyes open. The sight that met them was both comforting and   
frightening at the same time.   
  
Her father, or at least, the man she'd come to think of as her father, sat beside her   
hospital bed watching her intently. Although he tried to smile and look reassuring, his   
eyes betrayed him. "Daddy?" She asked softly, trying to push herself up in the bed.   
They'd tied her legs down. Why on Earth would they want to do that? Maybe she was   
kicking and tossing about in her sleep? That was probably it. Her father had gotten   
more than one kick to the groin when trying to wake her up for school. Reflexes.   
  
James Gordon jumped in surprise at the sound of his daughter's soft voice. His mind   
had apparently been on other things. "Shh! Barbie." He whispered, cupping her cheek   
in his hand lovingly. Barbara had always hated it when he called her Barbie, but this   
time she was happy to hear the familiar pet name. The news wasn't good, she could   
surmise that much from the look in his sympathetic eyes. "The doctors didn't think   
you'd be awake so soon...I want to talk to you before they get here, Barbie."  
  
Barbara closed her eyes for a split second, the image of the Joker's face and smoking gun intruded on her mind, and she quickly opened them again. "Daddy, I have to explain...I..." Where did she begin?  
  
The retired police commissoner laughed and sat back in his chair. "Do you really think I'm that stupid, Barbie? You aren't my biological daughter, that's true...but even *I* am father enough to recognize my daughter, even when she is wearing a black leather body suit and mask."  
  
She felt winded. "You knew? You knew...all this time and never tried to stop me?"  
  
"It was your decision to make. Besides," He paused, weighing her with his eyes. "I wanted you to tell me. I waited for years for you to trust me with that secret, Barbie. I kept holding out hope that sooner or later you would tell me the truth. I should have stopped you, I realize that now. But, you were sixteen years old...and I was still so knew to this parenting thing that I wasn't sure how to handle it. I didn't really have any friends to consult...I thought about asking Bruce Wayne, he was always taking in problem teenagers and turning them around. But, asking for advice entailed telling him you were...HER, and I didn't really want to endanger you like that. Bruce is my friend, but I'm not sure any of my friends are trustworthy enough to be told THAT secret. You knew the risks. You were a smart girl. I just had to trust you to take care of yourself...and come to me if you ever got yourself into a jam even you couldn't get out of."  
  
"You're speaking in the past tense." Barbara observed softly. "Why are you talking about me like I'm dead..."  
  
James removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I've managed to convince the press that you were attacked in your apartment by an escaped convict with a vendeta against me. They're content with that, for now. I can conceal enough evidence to keep the GCPD from finding out what happened to you and Ms. Kyle...That much I can make better..."  
  
"Daddy, talk to me." Her voice was firm now, no longer that of a frightened child. He was hiding something, and in typical Barbara fashion, she was getting annoyed at being left out of the loop. "What can't you make better?"  
  
"The Joker's shot...well, it didn't hit any major organs. That's a miracle in itself. Apparently, you flinched away just enough to make the bullet ricochet off one of your ribs. We're lucky it didn't bounce around in there, it could have cause some pretty severe damage. It would have killed you." Here he paused, lowering his eyes to the linoleum floor. "It exitted through your back, Barbie."  
  
Barbara felt her entire body become icy cold. Her blood stopped flowing, freezing into a solid mass in her veins. Her heart stopped, pausing between beats. Her breath became frost in her lungs, heavy and cold and painful. Her green eyes left her father's loving face and drifted down the hospital linens to her legs. She was a smart girl. She could read between the lines. Her legs weren't tied down. "Daddy?" Gone was the courage and self confidence, she was back to using that little girl voice again, the one that broke her father's heart.  
  
James followed her gaze painfully. "I'm sorry." What more could he say?  
  
"Is it...Could it be temporary?" Please, God, let it be temporary.  
  
James shook his head slowly. "Your spinal chord was severed, Barbie. It won't ever heal."  
  
The ice in her veins shattered, a million tiny shards shot through her, cutting her soul to ribbons. "I'm paralyzed." Her voice was hollow, empty. She was shutting down. She'd done it before, when her biological father had beaten her. It was the only way to keep her sanity. She shut the world out and locked herself away in her mind.   
  
The subsequent months of physical therapy, of crying herself to sleep and contemplating suicide were interrupted one evening when a third shift nurse noticed her hospital room light on, and offered her a newspaper to read until she could get to sleep. It was nestled in the back, on a page of bullshit that no one would bother reading, except the other insomniacs trying to find sleep among the Times New Roman font. It was there that she read a short story about orphans in the system being given a bum deal. Helena Kyle was mentioned briefly. Her mother, Selena Kyle, had been the victim of a stabbing the same night as Barbara's attack. Apparently, Helena had been remanded to a group home and was fitting in better than the system would have liked, considering that her new housemates were almost all juvenile delinquents with penchants for drugs, stealing, and chaos in general.   
  
The pieces fell together. Hadn't her father said something about Ms. Kyle? Hadn't Bruce disappeared shortly after that night without so much as a 'Get Well' or 'Sympathy' card? Hadn't she and Dick always known that Selena and Catwoman were one in the same...and that Bruce had a thing for her that went way beyond simple infatuation?   
  
Quite suddenly, that night in a room in a Gotham hospital, Barbara passed a point of no return. She stopped thinking of herself and her anguish, and focused her thoughts on that poor young woman, the fear and sorrow and anger she must have been feeling that same night in some group home in Gotham. There was a kindred spirit there. She knew it. She also knew at least some of what Helena would face in the years to come. She would need a guide...a mentor...a friend. Barbara harbored no ill conceived notions of grandeur. She wasn't sure what kind of an older sister she would make, but she was willing to give it a try.  
  
Bruce had done a great deal for her. He'd trained her, helped her test her wings, even taught her to fly. But, she wouldn't do this for him. She was going to do this for Helena. She was going to do this because she knew what it was like to feel alone in a dark world of strangers and nightmares and creatures that go bump in the night. She knew what it was like to almost lose your way, only finding the right path at the last possible second. She knew what it was like to lose something precious.  
  
It was in that moment, though she wouldn't realize it for several months to come, that she came to grips with her own loss. Little Barbara Gordon had grown up. She was no longer the girl content to follow, to ride on someone else's fame; she was no longer a shadow, a creature of the night. She'd come into her own. It was in that moment that Barbara decided to play the hand the Joker had dealt her, whether it be a flush or a full house, or two of a kind...she would ante up, play it, and win.  
  
That dark night not long ago, the Joker had succeeded. He had killed Batgirl, shot her straight through the heart. But, what he never planned, what he never counted on, was the strength of Barbara's spirit. From the blood of Batgirl and the courage Barbara never knew she had, came the Oracle...and Gotham would never be the same. 


End file.
